I have a hard time reading random Greek sentences without some more context. Sometimes more just helps me know what's going on, but so often Greek leaves out elements that have just been mentioned. So, this quote is from Lucian's Alexander the False Prophet, 15. Here's a bit more context,

Appearing not at all like bread-eating men, but only in appearance (not?) different from cattle.

So, this is sort of tricky. Verb with an inherently negative sense sometimes take a "sympathetic" negation in dependent clauses (Smyth §2739 and after). This is most familiar with verbs of fearing, but others do it too, with senses like deny, forbid, avoid, etc. It seems that Lucian has taken διαφέρω to be among these. I wasn't able to find other examples of the verb being used in quite this way.

Thanks, Annis. I was curious about this, so I looked it up in LSJ, and could not make heads or tails of it, not (only) because of the lack of context, but because the word διαφέρω itself is there abbreviated as δ. They do this a lot, which raises two questions.

1. Is there a rule to tell you what the form of the word in question would be if it were written out?

2. Why in the world do they do this? How much space is saved in a book this big by abbreviating the very word you are supposed to learn? There must be some rationale here, because I have never seen anyone else complain about this, but it drives me crazy.

BTW, once you gave the full quote I was able to figure out the passage, and I agree with your take.

If the LSJ is to be believed, this is a rare usage. I'm not sure what motivates to you dig into this single example so deeply.

I am reading something, and the passage I'm now doing seems to have this diaphero^ + inf. construction. So I want to be certain about this construction.

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Below is what I'm reading and what I researched about it.

τὰ δὲ πρῶτα νοήματα τί διοίσει τοῦ μὴ φαντάσματα εἶναι;

It first looked like a simple diaphero^ + gen. construction. But taking it so, the translation didn't go well.

Then I consulted Smyth on me^ And me^ ou WITH THE INFINITIVE (in my version the section is from 1630 - 1634, different from your version). And I found in 1632 a curious presentation.

1. eirgei me me^ graphein (he hinders me from writing)

2. eirgei me graphein (the same)

3. eirgei me to me^ graphein (the same)

4. eirgei me to graphein (the same)

5. eirgei me tou me^ graphein (the same)

etc.

The 5. caught my attention. It resembles my passage quoted above in construction. So I feel like trying to apply this to my translation of that passage.(In what point do the pro^ta noe^mata differ from phantasmata ?)

So, I want to be sure about how to translate diaphero^ + inf. construction.